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From: John Ravenscroft
Date: 13 Oct 2004
Time: 02:39:53 -0500
Remote Name: 195.92.67.68
Hi, Caitlin: As I said to Brandi above, the short answer to your question about therapy is - I don't know. I've been told I went to a speech therapist as a child, but I have no memory of the therapy at all. I suspect (but have no proof) that I found the experience painful and have blocked it out. I have very few early memories - far fewer than most people, I think - and it's possible my stutter is to blame for that. My theory is they were of painful, stutter-related experiences, so some mental mechanism kicked in and wiped them from my memory-slate. I certainly didn't have any therapy in later life, because that would have meant admitting I had a problem, and all my efforts were directed towards covering up my stammer. I was very good at it. I have a friend of 40 years who still thinks I'm making the whole thing up! 'Also, after keeping this a secret for so many years, what motivated you to "go public"?' The honest answer to this is that I wrote Tongue Tied primarily because I wanted to enter a £1,000 writing competition that required true-life stories. In searching for subject-matter, I realised that the story of my battle with speech was one of the most interesting true-life tales I had to tell, so I told it. In the course of writing it, I began to suspect that 'coming out' would do me a lot of good - and I think that has been the case. (Incidentally, I won the £1,000, but with a different piece called 'Killing Rabbits'.) Thanks for your interest in my piece, Caitlin. (John)